![]() ![]() The mismatch between the Newsmax and OANN pair and Fox cannot be exaggerated. Even if they do in times of peak interest like the “election fraud” episode, how many will remain after the hubbub subsides? As Biden moves into the White House and the election fraud story turns to vapor, we can expect Fox to reclaim most of its defecting audience by going full-bore against Biden with its superior production values and much more talented news and opinion anchors. Audiences have to search their cable dials for the alt-Fox networks or download the OTT apps. ![]() In many households, Fox burns like a winter hearth all day long, as background, diversion and even rapt viewing. For another thing, viewership habits are extraordinarily hard to break. For another example, when Fox’s favorite presidential candidates have underperformed-such as Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio in 2016-it’s been quick to dismount for a winning candidate like Trump and pretend that it always supported him. ![]() Again and again, Fox has proved itself resourceful in replacing “star” show hosts like Megyn Kelly and Bill O’Reilly with new versions of the same thing, such as Ingraham and Carlson, and carrying on after the departure of network auteur Roger Ailes. Predictions of Fox’s diminution-however stirring they might be to liberals-must clear several obstacles before they can be taken seriously. Suddenly, the prospect of extra-Trumpie news networks competing with Fox and supplanting it for conservative primacy seemed possible. The idea that Fox could be outflanked on the harder right was supported by a recent Wall Street Journal report that a Trump-friendly private equity company had approached Newsmax to buy or invest in it. One top Newsmax show, which usually hovers around the 58,000-viewer mark, recently attracted a record 1.1 million viewers, only a couple of million shy of a top-ranked Fox show running in the same time slot. “Bypass the big media,” as one Newsmax on-air promo instructs viewers, taking a shot at not just CNN but Fox, too.īoth channels have historically drawn low viewership numbers, but that’s changed at Newsmax. Even after Michigan and Pennsylvania certified the Biden victory and Trump had allowed the GSA to fund the Biden transition, Newsmax and OANN were still hyping the election-fraud angle, stoking its audiences’ passions with Foxier than Fox, pro-Trump kindling. And Newsmax and OANN bowed with enthusiasm that not even Fox in its toadiest moments ever mustered. Reject the authority of the newsies, Trump commanded, and accept mine. But both networks had struck a chord in Trump country by reliably producing news that matches the priors of Trump supporters and leaving their political preconceptions unruffled. Today, with the presidential election all but officially conceded, the Newsmax and OANN insurgency has faltered. Who possesses the real power here? The politician? The audience? The network? And if the network, which one? The answers arrived on the heels of the collapse of Trump’s legal ploy to overturn the election. Our president-for-the-time-being’s move to buffalo his legions of supporters away from his historically loyal mouthpiece poses a central question about the media-politician axis. Tucker Carlson, as Trumpie as a Trumpie can get without being a member of the family, earned damnation for doubting the berserk election-fraud theories of then-Trump attorney Sidney Powell. In the following days, Fox joined the consensus projection that Biden was the winner of the election and show-host Laura Ingraham and co-host Brian Kilmeade drew criticism from the right for meekly allowing that a Biden presidency might be in the offing. The network’s crimes of betrayal and heresy? It was first to call Arizona for Joe Biden. Fox’s coverage earned it Judas status among Trump’s most ardent supporters. It was a media story that sustained a thousand pundits, politicians, media critics and reporters for a generation, and it went like this: Fox News Channel, the devilish invention of Rupert Murdoch and Roger Ailes, rules the commanding heights of conservative broadcast news! It cannot be displaced! It is the tail that wags the dog of the Republican Party! The network that bolsters the Trump presidency and the essential source of news that issues hourly-and often untruthful-marching instructions for America’s populist-right millions!īut then came Election Night 2020. ![]() Jack Shafer is Politico ’s senior media writer. ![]()
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